POSITIONING YOUR WRITING IN A WINDOW IN EXPLORE

Hi everyone, it’s Charlotte C.   Thank you, Sheila, for inviting me to share a project with you again.

Many times I want the front of my card to have a personalized greeting to the recipient, mentioning the person’s name or relationship to me (i.e., son, daughter, etc.).  I don’t just want it to say Happy Birthday or Happy Anniversary or whatever.  I used my Explore to write my greeting on the base of the card and then layered it with a framed window I created.  By creating it myself, I was able to control the size of the window, what frame I wanted around it, the text, and the placement of the layer over the base so that the writing shows through.  And I could use foam tape to pop up that windowed layer over the base and writing if I wanted to.  And this is the how I did it.

In Design Space I created two rectangles: (a) one, the size of my card before folding and (b) the size of my top layer where the window will go; making each a different color.  My base here is top folding, 4.25 x 11 (light green); my top layer is 4.25 x 5.5 (peach).  You can make your top layer slightly smaller if you wish.  (If you have the score tool, insert and position the score line on the base, select it and the base by holding down the shift key and click Attach).

I searched for a frame I liked and inserted it on my screen.  (Note:  If it’s not a single layer frame, ungroup it and delete the portion you don’t need.)  I placed the frame on my top (peach) layer and sized it to my satisfaction.  Now that I had the correct size for the frame, I just moved that frame off the peach layer, created my text and sized it to fit inside the frame.  Change the cut lines on the text to “write.”

 Next step is to slide the text away from the frame, just set it aside for the moment, and create a rectangle very slightly smaller than the opening of the frame.  This rectangle is now the template for my window opening.

 I positioned that template on my top (peach) layer where I wanted it to cut the window, selected it and the layer, then clicked Slice.  I removed the rectangle and now had a window in my layer.  I deleted that template rectangle at this point.  I lined up that windowed top layer (peach) on the bottom half of my base and moved my text into that opening.  I then slid the peach layer away, selected the text and card base and clicked Attach.

My screen looked like this.

 When I hit Go to write and cut I got three mats because I used three different colors on screen.  The Explore wrote my text, asked me to replace the pen with the score tool to create the score, then cut the base. The two additional mats cut the window layer and the frame.  Once everything was cut, all I had to do was fold the base, decorate the top layer, and attach everything, like so.  

 Here’s an example of using the same technique with a round frame.

And this card was fun to do with four circle windows, three the same size.

 Of course, you don’t have to create your own text.  You could take text from the image library to insert into your frame, size it and continue (which is where I got "sunshine").  If that text has a layer, be sure to ungroup and delete the extra layer, because you can only attach a single layer to another single layer.  And be sure to change the cut to “write.”

I like the fact that you have options to decide the size and placement of your window, the frame surrounding the window, how easy Explore makes it to write your personalized greeting and all with the push of a button. 

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope this expands your creativity with your Explore.